A Ford, Not a Caesar

January 4,
2007

What
a contrast between the quiet passing of a
former president here and the embittered execution of one in Iraq. The
hanging of Saddam Hussein, hardly undeserved, degenerated into something
like a sectarian lynching, aggravating anger at the invaders rather than
giving the satisfaction of condign justice. It made
one grateful to live under some semblance, however imperfect, of the rule of
law.

The obsequies
for Gerald Ford have finally ended, and I must say I found them more moving
than I expected to, especially the sight of his poor widow, looking so much
more frail than I remembered her. Such a terrible loss to endure so late in
life! But that is the price of such an enduring love at its inevitable end. One
aches to console her, if there were any way.

Ford was not a
great president, but presidents arent supposed to be
great. Their constitutional duty is modest: to see that the
laws are faithfully executed. This Ford tried to do without heroics or hubris
or the grandiloquent rhetoric now attached to the office.

C.S. Lewis
remarked that politicians are now called leaders rather than
rulers, and that this verbal change reflects a modern change
in political philosophy. A ruler, in the old days, was expected
to be wise and just; a leader is expected to be dynamic,
magnetic, exciting. Ford never saw it as his role to agitate or inspire; and
that, in a way, is why we remember his brief presidency so fondly. What
seemed a deficiency at the time  his dullness  now seems a
relief from the turmoil of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon years.

The eulogies
spoke of Ford as healing and reconciling. They may have exaggerated his
virtues, but you can hardly doubt that they expressed a yearning for
surcease from the excesses of the incumbent. It came as no surprise to
learn that he had been skeptical of George W. Bushs chiliastic
enthusiasm for democratizing the world through warfare. You cant
even imagine Jerry Ford getting us into the current mess in the Middle East.

During
his presidency
his conservative critics complained that Ford lacked principle, that he was
too ready to compromise; and they had a point. He was, in fact, suspicious of
principle, which he tended to see as extreme. In 1980 he was
warning his fellow Republicans that Ronald Reagan cant
win against Jimmy Carter. That was Ford, always playing it safe. But
we have now seen what a more adventurous spirit can lead to.

Its easy
to forget how turbulent the Ford years actually were. The Vietnam war was
coming to an ignominious end, and racial and abortion politics were starting
(or intensifying) party realignment. The turmoil of the Sixties, a distant
memory now, hadnt really ended yet. But we remember Ford as an
almost apolitical figure, as Eisenhower once seemed to be  though Ike
had come to politics late in life, and Ford had made a career of it.

The current rage
for Barack Obama  I think it will be brief  is, like earlier
frenzies for Ross Perot and Colin Powell, due to the same yearning for a wise
ruler who is above politics. Maybe what people really want is not democracy,
but royalty  a symbolic monarch. It may be part of Fords
appeal that he was never elected to the presidency and never appeared to
aspire to it.

Curiously, or
ironically, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who served under both Ford and
Bush, have emerged as apostles of executive power, feeling that the
presidency was crippled by post-Watergate reforms. Ford himself never
chafed at the limits of the office. In that respect he was a throwback to an
older, truer conservatism, suspicious of concentrating power in the
executive branch and in favor of dispersing it. He was old enough to recall
Franklin Roosevelts Caesarism, which conservatives adopted when it
began to suit them  that is, when Republicans found it easier to win
the White House than Capitol Hill.

One word we
seldom heard during Fords presidency was historic. He was
blessedly free from hype, sticking to precedent and routine. In retrospect,
even his ordinariness seems almost a rare and precious quality, especially
when you compare him with the current crop of Republican presidential
hopefuls.

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